Alaise sat uncomfortably, her hands clasped in her lap, eyes guiltily flicking between the forms of the two men in her company. The older man was presently sprawled unconscious on the musty, overstuffed pillow they let the neighborhood stray use on stormy nights. The red-head sat across from her. His chestnut eyes roamed the room critically with deep suspicion, which only heightened when they looked at Alaise. She felt as though she were under deep scrutiny, but she was used to that. Alaise supposed she shouldn't feel it was about her appearance, either, for there was no suspicious mystery behind two people of different races coming together
He was first cognizant of the sensation of leaves brushing against his face, and a hushing sound beneath him. Shifting, he could feel the squeakiness of plant matter against his skin, before letting out an unintentional groan as something sharp and hard slid up under him and knocked the shoulder of his broken collar bone. And yet, while he anticipated to immediately vomit, he did not. It wasn't until this point that he opened his eyes to the sight of trees idly sliding past above him, dappled light conveying across him as if he were still and all else were in motion around him. The sharp, nausea-inducing pain that had shocked through Dustan p
Edel woke Dustan at dawn the next morning, and told Dustan to crowd in next to him. The other man, now that Dustan could finally see him, was very thin and delicate-looking, almost like a woman. His skin was dark and chocolatey, and his hair was silky and black though it could have done with a thorough combing. His eyes were an oceanic blue-green. All of this Dustan noticed while his face was basically pressed into Edel's, a blanket over the both of them as the other prisoners climbed down the sides of the bunkbeds. Dustan could not see how this could possibly work, but Edel was insistent.
"It works," he whispered, "it always works."
To Dus
It had been going on this way for months, now. Leave, ride for hours. Ride until you run out of sunlight. If you're in a town, find someone to quarter you. If the town is a recent conquest, prepare for looks of disgust and hatred and smell the tea for gifts of poison. If you're not in a town, set up camp by moonlight. Use magic for light only if absolutely necessary. Sleep only until the first sliver of graphite dulls the ink of the sky, blotting out the stars, one by one. Begin to pack up. Eat your dry rations. Drink so much water, you're bloated. Make sure you leave nothing behind. Ride.
Horuk Gavrel was the highest-ranking soldier in the
Working all day for his sworn enemy's military had left Dustan with a foul taste on his tongue, but he assumed that many of his fellow prisoners felt the same. They walked as they ate their suppera bowl of slop with a few pheasant legs stuck into itbeing herded en masse back to their bunks. Dustan's hands felt blistered from the hot bottles of magical liquid he'd been handling, but they looked all right. Faern said that the burn was beneath the surface. This did not comfort Dustan.
They reached the room and handed their bowlswhether empty or not by that pointto the guards, and began to climb up into the bunk beds. It
Dustan had been completely unable to sleep. The slab of wood beneath him was rough and the heads of the nails weren't flush, the edges sticking up and raking against his skin. The man behind him breathed so quietly that the incessant whispering of the pair above them drowned it out, which was somehow more distracting than if he'd been a loud breather. Dustan frequently wondered if he was on death's door. It wouldn't have surprised him. But when the other two finally fell asleep, he could hear a very faint, shallow breathing coming from the other man. Once or twice he would whisper in his sleep.
Slowly, dawn came over them, and surprisingly,
She had been out earlier than the sparrows that morning, readying the rickshaws that stood alongside their home, preparing for the wealthy fruit-pickers that would undoubtedly be descending upon Chekhao Orchard District any day now. It happened every year: swarms of them came in, turning the life's work of the farmers into fun and play.
But Alaise knew that she and her family (and the other orchards in the area) were the ones who benefitted from it most, in the end. The tourists paid a fee to work for their own fruit. All of the orchards offered this, but she and her mother had a marked strategy that brought them a competitive edge: they off
Twin suns sit fixed above, shocks of color shooting between them, indicating their present, unstoppable, cataclysmic yet eternal collision. They cast a splotch of violet across the sky, staining the otherwise clear blue of it. Water crashes on a rocky shore, washing a Jerup crab from its slick, mossy perch. Children run barefoot through the rough, stony sand and laugh as they collect worry-smooth stones and shells. Fishermen steer their boats in and out of the many small lagoons in the area.
The breeze carries a warm saltiness and infectious smile. Young lovers hide away in secluded pockets of foliage and offshore caves and beneath blankets
HH Chapter 2-- Tereska by Binary-Wings, literature
Literature
HH Chapter 2-- Tereska
The weather in Terutas was mild and sublime this time of year. In the Kaplian Valley where the capital city was nestled safely, walled in by natural ridges that butted up against the very edge of the continent, it remained--for the most part--green and grassy. Vegetables were still being harvested, homes still being fixed up in preparation for the coming winter. Up in the mountains, however, it was snowing almost constantly. Soldiers were sent up daily to thaw it out in a controlled way--an accumulation of snow on any or all of those mountains was treacherous for the people living below, for an avalanche could spell disaster with n
In twelve years as a soldier, Dustan had never feared for his life as much as he had that night. Then again, there is a distinct difference between being a soldier during peace time and being a soldier in a time of war. Funny how they'd been at war with Terutas for four months now, yet it hadn't felt real until he'd woken up in the house that was quartering him to the suffocating heat and dizzying light of a fire engulfing it whole, its hospitable homeowners dead on the floor--one having been shot in the front doorway before being lit with magical flame, acting as a wick for the rest of the house. The woman of the house had killed herself, he